Posted on 06/23/2006 6:39:04 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
HEMET - Months after clashing with California's firefighters, Gov. Schwarzenegger started wooing them Thursday with a mass e-mail of gratitude for their hard work and with a photo opportunity at an Inland airport.
Schwarzenegger, who drew the ire of firefighter unions and others in last fall's special election, sent the laudatory e-mail to firefighter organizations across the state early Thursday, asking them to distribute it to their members.
Later, he met with a few-dozen firefighters at Hemet-Ryan Airport, where he signed an executive order for additional staffing and resources for firefighters. He heaped more praise on fire personnel there and stopped to pose for photos, sign autographs for children and chat with workers.
The two events come on the heels of a contentious ballot-initiative battle with firefighters, teachers and other union members who helped defeat an attempt by Schwarzenegger to restrict how unions use their members' dues.
Schwarzenegger already has started mending fences with teachers and prison guards as his re-election campaign takes off. Thursday, he reached out to firefighters.
"Everyone in this state owes you a debt of gratitude," he told the firefighters and their family members gathered under the blazing midday sun at the airport.
It remains unclear whether any of Thursday's activities will give Schwarzenegger a campaign boost.
The executive order, something he has done at the start of previous fire seasons, contains few mandatory changes and does not allocate a specific dollar amount.
Last year, Schwarzenegger's fire-season executive order called for increasing the minimum number of firefighters from three to four on 53 state fire engines.
This year's order, though, will increase engine staffing "as warranted based on fire threat conditions."
His e-mail also met with mixed reviews.
Recipients described the e-mail as the first of its kind. One group added a not-so-flattering editorial comment before forwarding the governor's message to its members.
The professional firefighters union shipped the e-mail with the following subject heading: "Governor Support Message Rings Hollow After 2005 Attacks."
A spokesman for the governor said Schwarzenegger sent the message simply because "he wanted to thank the firefighters for their hard work." Bill Maile did not have an explanation for why the governor sent the e-mail this year and not in past years, when he has signed similar executive orders.
"He felt it was appropriate to send today," Maile said.
The governor's campaign staff did not attend Thursday's event and did not send the e-mail to the firefighters.
The letter assured firefighters they would have all the support and resources they need this fire season.
"Fighting fires is a challenging and physically demanding profession," Schwarzenegger said in the e-mail. "I want you to know that I deeply appreciate the many risks you take and the sacrifices you make."
A spokesman for a firefighters union that has endorsed Schwarzenegger's opponent in November, Democrat Phil Angelides, said the governor's praise for firefighters goes only so far.
"It's an election year and there's no politician around who's not interested in posing for a picture with firefighters," said Carroll Wills of the California Professional Firefighters, a union that represents about 30,000 members statewide.
Labor unions representing firefighters have been at odds with Schwarzenegger since before the 2005 special election.
In 2004, the unions opposed the governor's attempts to overhaul the state's workers' compensation system. Early last year, they helped scuttle the governor's plan to change pension benefits for firefighters and other public employees.
The union representing state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection firefighters has not endorsed in the gubernatorial election. Some of the 5,500-member association were at Thursday's event in Hemet.
I'm torn...
... between wanting every year to be an election year, or finding some way to cut back on the number of elections and spare Americans all the wasted money and time.
On the one hand, everything seems to get done in an election year. On the other hand, election years are expensive and wasteful, not to mention stressful.
For example, I have a neighbor (in a rural area where CDF is the lead agency) who was told that the plan for his remodel job must include room sufficient on the driveway for a hook and ladder truck to turn around. Never mind that a hook and ladder truck wouldn't make it up the narrow, windy county road, much less his driveway! The real beneficiary (as is nearly always the case in this county) is the local quarry, which makes the aggregate for the pavement. Driveways MUST have ONE FOOT of compacted baserock, supposedly to support the fire trucks... The county road, which hasn't been paved since the '70s, is three-quarters of an inch of oil and screen on bare dirt. The pipes to the house have to be four inch, but the fire trucks can't pull more than a two-inch pipe (the local plumbing supply owner drives a viper). They have doubled the required water storage capacity every five years (he sells the tanks too).
The local county GIS system has a map of fire hazards, that includes a patch below my house listed as a "severe fire hazard." There is no accumulation of combustable vegetation on that slope and the flat below it has been thinned; i.e., no hazard. My property is so well thinned that you can tell the difference on GoogleEarth from 20,000 feet in altitude (everything else is either overgrown or denuded). Within this "severe fire hazard" is also a vineyard. Neither CDF nor the county knows how to correct the map which may well become a basis for denying me insurance. Needless to say, there's no map of fire roads.
Isn't "firefighting" wonderful?
I have hoses, chainsaws, and extra stand pipes. If these morons come here to protect my house, my preference is to tell them to go away.
I came across a long thread about USFS firefighting in CA also....they are short staffing their stations in the National Forests
Staffing that used to be covered by timber revenue, but the USFS employees decided to be a foil for the RICO-nuts.
Payback's a bitch.
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